Several years ago I took it upon myself to read all the fiction books which have won the Pulitzer Prize. While I still have a few left to read, it has been a fun reading exercise so far, and I've read some books and authors I probably wouldn't have otherwise picked up.
Over the past couple of days I read 2009's winner, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. I wasn't really expecting much since a couple of weeks earlier I read a runner up for 2009's prize called All Souls by Christine Schutt. Frankly, I thought it was pretty terrible, and I will never understand why it was picked to be shortlisted. I thought that if All Souls was second best for the year, maybe the winner wouldn't be very great either.
I was wrong. Olive Kitteridge is a novel in short stories. The book spans several decades in a small coastal town in Maine. The characters lives and stories are intertwined, and the larger than life character of Olive Kitteridge makes an appearance in each story to tie them all together.
By the time I finished reading, I was sad the book wasn't longer. Even though the stories weren't necessarily happy, some of them were actually rather tragic and even shocking, I just wanted to keep reading to find out what would happen next. In my opinion, Olive Kitteridge definitely deserved the prize it was given. Now, I just have to wait to see what wins this year!
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